Air Force Awards Contract for GURU to Put the Simple in Simulation

LOS ANGELES: MSBAI, an Air Force Techstars 2020 company, has been awarded an AFWERX Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 contract to examine integrating the GURU technology to Air Force applications.

Engineers use computer simulations for anything from airflow over wings to thermal analysis of the hot section in gas turbines. The problem is the simulation software is too complicated to learn so they're not getting the most out of it.

MSBAI created GURU, an AI-driven assistant that learns to run the complicated software itself so you don't have to — minimizing the human workload needed to translate engineering questions into computational workflows.

With cloud systems already offering the compute power of government supercomputers from not long ago, it takes more time to set up a structural/thermal/fluid/trajectory analysis than it does for the computers to run them. The newest exascale, and coming quantum systems will require this kind of AI layer for humans to be able to keep up.

There are numerous dual-use applications that come from enabling more engineers to use the best design & analysis software and deploy it at high performance computing scale manufacturers stand to gain a 500-to-1 return on investment, and the DoD will save billions of dollars in aircraft sustainment and gain advantages in rapid reaction. GURU's commercial deployment is SaaS B2B, and it will be a game-changer for remote work.

As an engineer who struggled with these overly complicated simulation software packages myself, I felt the pain that GURU relieves, says Warren Katz, Managing Director of the Air Force Accelerator Powered by Techstars. The award of this Phase I SBIR to MSBAI will ultimately enable engineers throughout the DoD that are working on our toughest problems in hypersonics, quantum computing, heat transfer, optics, electromagnetics, fluid mechanics, etc. to make many more trials per day and enable many more engineers to use these impossibly complex tools.

MSBAI is a privately held small business located in Los Angeles, CA, developing the cognitive AI assistant for engineering GURU.

AFRL and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research process in an attempt to speed up the experience, broaden the pool of potential applicants and decrease bureaucratic overhead. Beginning in SBIR 18.2, and now in 20.1, the Air Force has begun offering 'Special' SBIR topics that are faster, leaner and open to a broader range of innovations.

(PRN)

Like This Article?
Air Force Awards Contract for GURU to Put the Simple in Simulation